


Light Years

by snagov



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Body Worship, Established Relationship, Love, M/M, Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), Smut, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25231591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: Some things, however, should be said in the light.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 87





	Light Years

_"You were waiting outside for me in the sun_   
_Laying down to soak it all in before we had to run_   
_I was always ten feet behind you from the start_   
_Didn’t know you were gone ‘til we were in the car_   
_Oh, the glory of it all was lost on me_   
_Til I saw how hard it’d be to reach you_   
_And I would always be light years,_   
_light years away from you"_

The National, _Light Years_

_Spring 2019  
_ _Seven Sisters, near the South Downs_

Tell me about a shipwreck man.

Tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had once fallen in love with a holy thing. (He's a demon. Nothing special. Not allowed to love holy things. There are rules.)

He's driven out to the shore. The edge of the earth out here. Or it seems like it must be. Just this, the cliffs and the sea. If you kick a rock out, it will fall, sink, you'll never see it again. So he cuts a dark figure against the cloudlit sky, heavy there with the threat of rain. The beetle-black Bentley sits parked behind him, patiently waiting for him to be done with _whatever_ this rot is. His hair is caught in the wind. His black jacket too. Fists in the pockets like stones. Kick another rock. Watch it fall all the way down. The cliffs undulate as the waves do. Seven cliffs. There had been eight once but he had never visited them then. The sea is swallowing the last. The air wearing it down. The earth takes what it will. Things change. _Stuff happens._

(Crowley is at the cliffside. He is forty-nine miles away from Soho. Maybe less, as the crow flies. He hasn't asked the crows.) 

He's thinking about measurements. Calculations. It takes forty-five minutes to get to the edge of the world, if you count the cliffs. We haven’t looked at measurements. Let’s study distance. Get out your books and your black pen too. Take notes. Get a glass of water. (Yes, I will wait, I will be here when you get back.) It’s hard to hit a moving target, to land on a floating island. If something doesn’t stay still, it’s near impossible to give a good estimate of the space between us. What if we’re moving too? Sailors have been the inventive ones, telling their positions by the stars. _Where are you?_ we ask. _Somewhere south of Orion,_ they say, _and following it west._

He makes a face. Sniffs the salt air. 

Hands in his pockets, yes, Fiddling with the lint and his carkeys. He doesn't know why he bothers to come here. Doesn't know why he's here today. There's nothing wrong, right? Not really. After we say _I will come to you_ , we must measure the space between us. There are two ways to count distance. If I say, _I am off at the shore_ , how will you explain the measure of it? You could say, _I am forty-three miles away_. But that doesn't answer the real question, tell me what I really want to hear. Say it, say it, say it in words that I know. That mean something.

_I will be there in forty minutes. (Hold tight. Wait for me.)_ Crowley swallows, the wind catching his hell-hair with it. Six-thousand years of yelling in quiet ways, of whispering and weaving and this desperate _no one cares, we don't matter, that's why we're left here. Come away with me. There's no Kingdom Come, just the one I'll make for you somewhere. Come away with me._

Hurry up please, it's time.

* * *

_Summer 2019 (The Day After The World Kept Going)  
London_

Crowley turns his neck, spreads his fingers, trying to get used to himself again. 

“Time to leave the garden,” he says, looking over at Aziraphale doing the same. The little wiggle of the shoulders, the self-satisfied settling of the bowtie. _Tartan, really._ “Can I tempt you to a spot of lunch?”

“Temptation accomplished.”

How long can we linger at a table? How long? A few hours perhaps, if we order enough. So Aziraphale orders. Chicken and cider. Demi-glace. Red wine. Duckfat-roasted duchess potatoes. Lemon sole. There is the catch of French onion soup. There is the white-wine-song of moules marinières as a server passes by. This basket of fresh baked bread on the table and the yellow-rich butter. Crowley watches him. There, behind dark lenses. A glass of wine in hand, a cup of espresso (no cream, no sugar). Listening and waiting. 

Neither of them have brought up what will happen when they leave this table. Walk out of the restaurant. Your place or mine? Together? Separate? 

When you're used to saying _run away with me,_ you forget to consider what comes next. Crowley frowns, running one skinnybone finger up and down the stem of his glass. He'd never exactly _expected_ Aziraphale to turn to him, soft smile in his librarian eyes and wearing a jacket fifty years out of date. Never expected Aziraphale to come up to him in his own goddamn kitchen, press into him, hands against Crowley's own chest, saying _yes, I love you, yes, it's time. I'll go with you._ (Crowley never does think ahead.) 

There is the usual dance but this, this time is different. There is no kingdom above to watch. No dungeon below to spy. Just left alone, left alone at a table and waiting for the check and someone's got to break, someone's got to give. My place or yours? They will need to decide. (They've kissed. It cannot be the same.) He holds a bit of port in his cheek, swishing it around. Leans back again in the chair, his bones a pile of wire hangers in a black coat. He shifts, shifts again. Drinks. Drums his long fingers on the table, cracks his knuckles, cracks his spine. Runs impatient hands through his own red-dirt hair.

(Not long ago, not even three hours past, they had both been in Heaven and Hell. Distance of one million light years. Time until destination, 18,449,000,000 years.)

He keeps watching Aziraphale's blasted hands. His ridiculous hair. This mess of him made out of atoms and molecules and acids and bases too. There's something awful climbing up the back of Crowley's sour throat. Tense, dark. Grendel trying to get out of the swamp. He bites the meat of his cheek, still hearing Aziraphale there in the park. _“I asked the archangel Michael for a rubber duck!”_ He'd said it with such a grin. Crowley had said nothing back. Laughed, smiled. Kept Heaven to himself. _Fuck._ Guilt grows. It has ivy-reaching hands. They curl at his feet, up the calves. Let’s tear them, break them. He needs to get away. _You don't know what they were going to do to you. (Where do we go now but nowhere?)_

He kicks his feet about under the table, shifting. Knocks against leather brogues. 

Look at his own hand on the wineglass. This is where the doubt starts, somewhere in the ragged cuticles, the soil-dark fingernails. Somewhere in picking at a hangnail. Then he moves up his (too skinny) arms. Up, his hands moving over this razor jaw. He’s not made for comfort. This coil of himself, even his bones are too sharp. _I have yellow eyes. Do you like yellow? Are they okay? (Am I?) My hair is red. I know you know that (you always have), but do you like that? I can change it if you like (a miracle, a box of dye). I can be anything you need. Swear. I’m trying to guess. Tell me what you like._

"Is it a blasted labyrinth back there? It's been ages. Where's the check?" Crowley mutters, twisting in his seat. 

"Crowley, be patient." 

"I'm _patient._ It's gonna take a bloody miracle to get out of here. I might as well get change of address forms and mail my goddamn _bills_ here." He feels itchy. Maybe it's the leftover heavenmuck. He hadn't stepped foot in Heaven in ages, it had been strange to see. It had been strange to sit there on that park bench, having freshly shaken off Aziraphale's body. Take off linenwhite, take back the black. (He doesn't belong in white.) Watching Aziraphale then with a strong impulse to touch him. It would have been fine, wouldn't it? (They've already kissed. Fucked. Fallen in love. Surely it would be fine.)

He had ignored it, pushed it down. _Do you have any idea what they were going to do to you? I can't tell you. I won't._

"When have you _ever_ paid a bill?" Aziraphale asks, watching him. "Do you have somewhere to be?" He is holding his spoon very still. The plate is empty, just a few crumbs left of a well-demolished pâte sucrée crust, a smear of lemon curd.

There it is. Not in so many words. _Why are you in a hurry?_ _What are you doing after? Do you want to go somewhere with me?_ Crowley turns back to him. There is a too-long beat of a moment. "No."

Aziraphale sips from his wine. It's a good Sauternes. Smooth, sweet. Crowley stares at it in the glass. Aziraphale brushes invisible crumbs from his linen sleeves. One of them needs to bring it up. Talk about it. He doesn't want to be the first. He's worried about his heart. A wooden stake is the old method of taking a demon apart. But it's not so simple to stab a man in the chest. Our hearts run, they want to be protected, so we have grown bone cages around them. How do you get to the heart? Tear the skin, the little muscle, shatter through the sternum. (The thing is that words work just as well and they’re far easier.)

There's Aziraphale taking a deep breath, frowning. Pulling his brows together, tip to tip and worry-wrinkled. Crowley arches a brow, sets his cup down. His arm is tossed out over the back of the chair still. The light is catching on the glasses and in his flamelick hair. _Okay, yeah, I'll do this one._

"Come back to mine, angel. I've got that scotch you like."

Aziraphale looks at him the way he had once in Tadfield, paint-free. "Oh, thank you. Yes, let's."

(Don't forget about 1967. Distance of one and a half feet. Time until destination, fifty-two years.)

Hurry up please, it’s time. _Don’t you dare fuck this up._

* * *

Crowley throws his jacket on the hall table. Casts an eye about, arching his brow. He's looking for anything out of place. Daring anything to step out of line. ( _I wasn't expecting you to come here today_.) You see, if he can just get it _perfectly_ clean, _perfectly_ arranged. If he can take out the trash and make sure the refrigerator is spotless. If he can tidy the mail pile and pick up the clothes on the floor. If he can make sure there is nothing of himself visible, just this carefully-curated cover of slickdark grey granite and his wall of plants, if he can make sure he’s _right,_ that he’s _good enough,_ then maybe he won’t fuck it all up. 

That’s the trouble with stories, the trouble with happy endings. We don’t just kiss, we don’t just call out _I love you,_ we don’t just fall into bed and find everything slots into place around us. Crowley has always expected this (he has never thought that it might be work, that it might be hard). This is the trouble with true things. You cannot buffer yourself out. You can’t blend the paintstrokes of yourself, of your love. You have to admit to all the jagged bits, all the imperfect things. (Don't try to explain it, to explain yourself. Don't try to give a definition or clutch at reason. It never works. It never helps.)

He keeps thinking about white. White walls. White floors. He keeps walking around the flat, watching for fire around every corner. 

Aziraphale frowns, “You’re nervous.”

“What? No, I’m _fine_ -“

“I have known you for _six-thousand years_ , Crowley, don’t try to pretend.”

“Not _pretending._ Come off it.” ( _Let’s ignore it. Look, here’s a rug. Sweep it under._ )

"Don't you think I'm nervous too?" Aziraphale says. Soft. It echoes. This is a hallway made for echoes. 

(Where are we now? With Circe and her Isle of Pigs? With the Lotus-Eaters? Look at your ship there on the water, Crowley, tell me when you’ll get there. Tell me when you’ll make it home.) 

His throat is desperately dry with anxiety. "Yeah. I know but - "

"But what?"

There’s a long silence. "What if it all goes, you know, pear-shaped?" They stare at each other across the room. (Alpha Centauri is 4.367 light years away from the Earth. It would take about one-hundred years to reach it.) 

Aziraphale stands there, his breath a bit fast and the bowtie dancing at his nervousneck swallow. (They should have had this conversation already. Crowley shouldn't know the feeling of Aziraphale's skin under his mouth. Knowing is a dangerous game.) "It won't."

Crowley stares. The hall is very long and very dark. It seems to stretch out forever. Cover everywhere. And then just this spot of light with skystuff eyes and yes, still the vellum-pale hair. And he's a bit fussy about his collars and sleeves, yet somehow rumpled too. _How do you manage it?_ And there's the gentle wobble of the lip, there's the worry in the lines at the eyes and the mouth. Of course he worries, of course. ( _God, I'm such a fucking fool._ Yes, yes, don't look at yourself, pay attention here.)

“It might,” Crowley says. Tight-fisted hands and looking away. The razor’s edge, a battered storm door watching the yellow sky. He breathes in. It does nothing to settle his stomach. There's so much evidence laid out already. Look, there up on the shelves. See the grey-leaf dusty miller that Crowley's been tending for ages. (Senecio cineraria, yes. He keeps it because it is soft, because it is dusty too and grey-white as bookdust hair and _thank god you know nothing about plants, angel, that's the one language you've never learned_.)

"I won't _let_ it." 

" _Yeah_?" Crowley asks with his acid-tongue. "What if you don't get to _decide_ that? You ever think about that? You ever think about the fact that yeah, maybe we've got a breather for now. For a bit, right? My money's on that it won't last long. Not forever. Not _forever_ ever. And what are they gonna do when they see you _fraternizing_ with me? Fuck Falling. They'll just throw you into the goddamn _fire,_ angel. Won't even ask _questions._ "

Aziraphale is very still. His hand still holding his jacket, ready to find a hanger, put it up in a closet. "Crowley. What happened up there?"

"You don't want to know." (Crowley mutters it to the floor.) 

"For Heaven's sake, _tell me_ ," Aziraphale grits, fingers tightening on the fabric. "They sentenced you to death by holy water. Do you think I won't understa -"

"They didn't give you a _trial,"_ Crowley hisses. Shoulders heaving in a dark jacket, fists clenched and knuckles very white. Blame Heaven, call out the angels one by one by one. Gabriel first. Then Michael and Uriel too. Throw the rest of the lot in. Why not? He's never liked Sandalphon. (He's had a bone to pick with Cupid for awhile.) 

Aziraphale blinks, "Pardon?"

"Didn't let you say a goddamn single word. Do you think they cared? Do you give they gave an utter fuck about you? Look, I won't tell you what the hell was even - Just, fuck, Aziraphale, they're not going to let you _explain_ , they're not gonna let up. Maybe a few years, decades, centuries, whatever. Then what is it? Tied hands and directly into the _fucking fire_?"

Aziraphale doesn't move. He's steady, firm. Always stubborn to a fault. Crowley stares at him, watching the pulse tick. The firm throb of the carotid, the even-keel mouth. He gets it. There is nothing of doubt here, no indecision. Not anymore. There is _nothing_ in the nervous-twitch of Aziraphale's throat of pale love, nothing in the lines of his clenched fist of faint praise. There is a flicker of memory of Aziraphale in steel armor, of carrying a flaming sword. Angel of Heaven, made out of warrior-stock. (It's easy to forget between quoting Ovid and frequenting wine-tastings. Crowley is being reminded.)

"I don't care."

Crowley takes a step forward. "You don't get to pick that."

"I am making a _decision,_ Crowley." Aziraphale's brows are set in his usual bull-steel way. There's no arguing with him when he gets like this. His shoulders are set to say _I've made a decision; I made it a long time ago._ His riverwater eyes spark in the low light, dangerous and electrical. 

"What the _fuck_ , angel," Crowley hisses. He flares like a cobra. Watch the tension snap. Suddenly he's moved forward. Has pressed Aziraphale to the wall and Aziraphale's head is tilted back and good god, those hands are in his shirt, pulling him tighter. There’s the snap of two moments. There is _we are nearly there_ and then there is the crash of _now._ Yes, yes, these mouths together, his hands trying to bury themselves in the tilled earth of Aziraphale’s waistcoat and chalk-hill hair. White as the Seven Sisters, yes. Oh god, that mouth on his (he's watched it all day, wanted it all day). _Finally, thank you, fuck, yes, more._

"Don't ... be a bloody ... idiot - " Crowley's gasping it against Aziraphale, into his mouth, into his ear. This two of them together, pressed up against a wall. Locked and loaded. Hips canted in, stone-solid underneath. "This is the stupidest decision of your …. goddamn life." _I want to fuck you into this wall and through it. You're making everything so fucking difficult, just you existing, doing these things that you always just do. Do you have any idea? I want to get you in my mouth, right in the back of it, till it hurts, till I can't breathe. I want to open you up and fuck you so deep that I can count every one of your vertebrae, make sure they're all there._

"Careful," Aziraphale says, pressing his thigh further into Crowley. There, right between the legs. Crowley can feel Aziraphale's now roughwant cock firm against the meat of his thigh and yes, he wants to push. Push and tease and pull again. Crowley leans back, heretic-yellow eyes wild, the whites of them long, long gone. 

" _Careful?_ Angel, what the -"

Aziraphale presses his knee in harder. "Don't you think it might be better in a bed?"

"Not sure I'm gonna _make_ it to a blasted bed," Crowley grits, pushing further into Aziraphale, mouth sinking to the bend of his neck. Teeth now. Tongue too. _Yes, crowd me up against this plaster wall. This matte-grey paint. Chip it, stain it, I don't care. It can be repainted. Bruise me if you would (I will heal, I want to wear you for awhile.)_

"Darling, it's easier on the knees."

(Crowley miracles them to the bedroom in a wink.)

* * *

_"Where are you? Look, wherever you are, I'll come to you."_

_(Where are you? This side of the continent? The other? Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a map, I’ll get there eventually. Wait for me.)_

* * *

This bed. (Aziraphale is seven centimeters away, give or take, depending on the moment. Sometimes he is none at all. Sometimes there is no distance, this space is closed. Sealed up. How much time between us? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We're here now. Stop awhile here with me.)

“Hello there,” Aziraphale says. He is peculiar; he is beautiful as a bonfire. Crowley shifts a little, discomfited. See the tanned arms, hair the color of milled flour. These eyes like skyscrape. That wide, easy smile. His shirt is tucked and well-fitted and oh, he smells like a soap of ambergris and sandalwood. _Oh. Hello there._

"So, er, how should we start?" 

"Come here and kiss me," Aziraphale says. So Crowley does. This ache here, mouth to mouth. It's beautiful. It hurts to be touched. He is already a bruise everywhere, already soft and pulpy here like a plum left in the bottom of a bag. It hurts. Doesn't matter. Keep going. _Tear me open. Please, take a bite._

Aziraphale pulls away a little, his eyes caught on Crowley's mouth, not leaving it. Those angelhands around the damp nape of Crowley's neck. He licks his lips. "Last time we did what I wanted," he says. "What do you want?"

"That _is_ what I want," Crowley says. He buries his face against Aziraphale's ear. It's easier to admit somehow, easier to talk about when not looking. His ears burn. His cheekbones too. _Yeah, tell me what you like, tell me how to be perfect. I want to do it right. I want to hear it from you (I've imagined it so many times). It was good last time, wasn't it? (Did you like it?) Tell me again._

"For me to tell you?" Aziraphale turns his head slightly, mouth against Crowley's ear, his temple, the scatter-grass of his hair, short there around the ears. 

"God, yeah." _Do that. Do what you will with me._  
  
Aziraphale swallows. "Push me down. On my knees." 

" _Fuck,_ yeah. Alright." Crowley brings his shaking hands up to Aziraphale's shoulders, pushing down ever so gently. Aziraphale sinks like a stone. Yes, there on his knees like a supplicant, there to offer prayer. Pale-scramble hair bent against the front of Crowley's jeans. Body heat mixing, the gentle pressure of forehead and nose to his shrill-red cock. He might scream. (Maybe he is already.) 

"How many times have you thought about this?" Aziraphale asks, hand hovering over the zipper. Crowley closes his eyes, fingers clenching at the shoulders. At Aziraphale's hair, yes. Try to hold on. _Every moment of every day._

"A lot," he manages. (The words barely stumble on out, caught on his tongue.) 

Aziraphale just leaves his hand there, fingers on the zipper pull, letting his small fingers brush circles over the fabric. "Tell me."

"You're gonna discorporate me, angel," he gasps.

Aziraphale doesn't say anything. Just flicks his gaze upward, that soft smile on his mouth. Patient. (Consider immortality. This could go forever. Indefinitely. The building could crumble, the sea could evaporate, the cliffs erode. Aziraphale could still be here, waiting.)

"Since - god, fuck, since the start." Yes, since Eden. Since he stumbled away in the rain, found a cave somewhere to keep dry. His new humanform and his curious fingers, wondering how things might work. He hadn't _meant_ to think of Aziraphale that first time, head kicked back against moss and fucking his fist. It had just happened. (He has never stopped.)

Aziraphale there on spread knees, taking down the zipper, making space for himself between Crowley’s thighs. Yes, down there like a grounding circuit, catching the spillover electrical current. Sliding his hand in. Crowley moans at the touch. Hand on his sun-sear hot self. Standing here in his bedroom, not having bothered with the lights. His clothes still on and Aziraphale's still in those damn trousers, that ridiculous waistcoat. Even the bowtie still, god, how can it - 

Then he's taken in, devoured down. This velvet-hot mouth, this ruin. (Here is Vesuvius, he should probably run.) Crowley cries out, stumbling a little. Catching his hands in Aziraphale's hair, on his shoulders. "Holy shit."

The touch doesn't let up. Aziraphale doesn't say anything, no. Just this, hands wrapped around and tongue running up the edge of him, saying some sort of blasphemous prayer. Crowley closes his eyes. Opens them, looks down again. Aziraphale is watching him. 

"Take your shirt off," he says, with drawn-near fingers. Demonscented fingers smelling like what? Like apples and hot metal, like seared skin and motor oil. He wonders if he'll leave trails of his scent on Aziraphale, if it will bounce off the heavenskin like water from a duck. _I hope it doesn't mark you (I hope it does.)_

"Well, I thought - " Aziraphale whispers, "I might leave it on."

Crowley blinks. "Are you sure?"

"Well, maybe -"

"What the hell, why? I mean, you do you, angel, but it's a bit hard to get my mouth on you through cotton. Never liked the taste of lint. Sticks on the tongue."

“Well, aren’t I -“

“Angel, what -“

“A bit, erm. Soft?”

“What?” He quirks a brow. Chenille is soft, velvet is soft. Aziraphale’s hair is soft. Skin too. Not the bone there, not the cartilage. Not the teeth. _What the bloody hell are you on about?_

“Erm, Gabriel pointed out that I’ve been _indulging_ a bit much lately.” He looks uncomfortable. “Coat’s a bit tighter these days.”

“I’ll tear him feather by feather, the miserable fuck.”

“ _Crowley._ ”

“You gonna trust that birdbrain bastard or can I convince you otherwise?”

Aziraphale laughs. _Good, I was hoping you’d laugh at that._ “What are you going to do, my dear?”

Crowley tilts his head to the side, runs one hand along the inner curve of Aziraphale’s calf. “Do you trust me?”

“Always.” 

“Words - look, words and I never really got on, so just - lie down. Alright? Trust me.”

“Alright, I trust you.” 

“Good. Of course you do, I’m amazing.”

“You dork.”

“You love it.”

“I love you.”

Crowley heats a little, looks away. “Well, you know. Probably worse decisions out there. Anyway, shut up, I’m _working_ here.”

_Pay attention. Let me tell you a love poem. I made the stars once. Same damn hands, angel, I can show you light._

"Lie back," Crowley manages. So Aziraphale pulls them both back, their knees knocking together. Crowley stares, thick-tongued. Aziraphale is the color of the sun. It is not the first time he has lain across Crowley's bed but that doesn't matter. The sun isn't less bright on any later day. ( _I want to capture you, this. I want Medusa’s head so I can freeze this, turn us all to stone. We'd never move from this moment. No forward or back, just this now. Let me have a camera at least, to capture this forever._ ) 

Let’s start here, a kiss. Aziraphale laid against the pillow, trying to stay still in the grey sheets. You don’t have to be as embarrassed if your eyes are closed and your mouth is busy, so Crowley leans in. Mouth to mouth, soft and open. This bit of sweat-salt on Aziraphale’s upper lip, lick it off. Take it in. Suck on the lower lip. He says here, right into Aziraphale’s own mouth, hot breath and like dipping grapes into him, _“I love you. Do you have any idea?_ ”

“I might, oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale’s hands wrap around the slickskinny neck, trying to pull Crowley further in.

“Patience,” Crowley smirks, “is a virtue, or so I’ve heard.” He licks up the side of Aziraphale's neck. Bites in at the jaw. "But I've never been really that good at virtues, you know." 

“You’re an absolute tease.”

“Teases don’t _deliver,_ angel.”

Aziraphale shuts his foolish mouth up. Weaves his hands into iron oxide hair. Crowley looks out over the spread of Aziraphale on the bed, naked and open. Laid out for him. He runs his hands over. Just the hands to start. The shoulders and the arms, the sides, the stomach, upper thighs. These places he has never touched, not like this. He has wanted to. Everywhere and every way. (He'll make a point of it later. There on the kitchen table, there in the back of a theater. In the Bentley, yes, that's a favorite. The backseat, Aziraphale's trousers opened and Crowley will sink so fast, so needing, this ancient fucking dream of his. Wolf down that red dick want. Take him in. Aziraphale's hands in his hair and maybe too tight, too lost in this. The other hand hot and sweaty on the window. Maybe a police officer will knock, see _what's going on here._ Doesn't matter. There are miracles for that. _God, I'll make you come for me in the backseat of my car. Right there, in the same place as all the times I never kissed you_.)

The sheets are damp. Aziraphale moans under his touch. It echoes a bit in the near-empty room. Off the long window there, looking out to the black night and the stars on high. The carlight and the brick buildings. It echoes off the hardwood floor and the nightstand. The stainless-steel lamp. Crowley pauses for a moment, leans back on his knees and heels, drinking in the look of Aziraphale on his bed. His body there stained by starlight.

Aziraphale shifts a little. A bit of a squirm even. "You did say something about _delivering,_ my dear." 

Let us move to the main course, to the meat of each other. When we crawl into bed, when we peel our clothes off like cutting off a layer of fat, cutting off the silverskin, saying _yes please, gulp me down, gobble me up, make a meal of me (I want to feel your teeth)._

“Tell me what you want,” Crowley whispers. Moves his rapture-hands over the soft hills of Aziraphale. See the Seven Sisters of his chest and stomach. See the swells and dips of him. _You’re beautiful, you’re so fucking beautiful. Gabriel doesn’t know shit. I’ll fucking drown the rat. You - you don’t know what you are, do you? Let me touch you, these soft parts of you. You are light wrapped in skin and sinew and I love your softness. Why is softness bad? It’s not (everyone’s got it all wrong). You said you trust me, so trust me on the way that I love you. Trust me on the way that you ruin me, trust me that I love every sheepsoft curve of you and your open mouth too._

He can smell the steam from Aziraphale's skin, some kind of soap. Aziraphale reaches up to pull him down, whispering something something and his name there as well. Crowley catches the hand, kissing each of the knuckles and the fingers. Learning the curves of them and the texture of the skin. The little scars of thousands of years (some wounds you let heal naturally). It's more than human, this want. This love. He lets his eyes unfocus, looking somewhere further. See the bones, the nervous system, the veins and the capillaries. _I love every part of you and all the bits of you that don't fit in here. Get your wings out, angel. Let me smell your feathers, let me show you mine. I'll let you make quills from me, write anything you like with me. Get out your wings, I want to come in from the storm._ Crowley moves down Aziraphale's breastbone. Here, the chestplate of him. Count the ribs, make sure they're all accounted for. Make sure we're whole and safe, that we've made it in one piece. It's been a long road, here we are. Finally. He knocks his mouth against the ribcage, the heartjail, listening for it to knock back.

"Oh, you're so good," Aziraphale whispers. "So wonderful. I want to tell you that all the time."

_You're wrong. I'm not. Let's turn around. Let's work backwards. I should tell you all the worst bits of me first. You know, I feel like a liar. A thief in the night, stealing in when you weren't looking, pretending to be good. You've got it all wrong. I'll be moody in the morning and I'll never watch your programs. I leave half-empty cups everywhere and socks on the bathroom floor. Sheets? I'll steal them. I'll be distracted sometimes, forget to ask you about your day. I'll hate it when you're gone too long, I'll forget what you've told me. (I'll love you too much.)_

"I love you," Aziraphale says, his head kicked back into the slategrey pillow. A white cloud in a storm sky. "Oh, I love you, you know that, don't you? You're so good, so good to me." 

_Tell me now. Tell me always. (I'll forget, you see. I'll doubt, I'll second-guess. It won't be you, it'll never be you. Not your fault that I have a brain like mesh, that this will slip through. That I'll turn worrydark again. I love you, tell me. I'll fill you back up with it. Always.) I made it all up there, you and I, these bodies are drawn from the scattershot I put out there. You remind me of a black hole. I'd like to get near you, orbit you. I always have, really. I was cast out, cast adrift. You anchored me. I want to crawl inside you, fall into your center. Let me fill you, let me bury myself in you._

"I want every part of you, angel, do you have any idea - "

"Tell me, please."

He has made it to Aziraphale's soft hips. He licks there, at the skin. The waves of Aziraphale. _Yes, let me show you, you are perfect. Beautiful. I love the gentlegrain of you, I love the taste of the salt on your skin._

A confession. It's not Aziraphale's name that he's breathing. It's his own. His name, Crowley. The others too, Anthony J. and Crawly (and that first of all names, unspoken except in the cut of his tongue). He is writing it here on Aziraphale, weaving it into the atommess of the two of them. There will never be a time when Aziraphale will not have been written on, will not bear and have born Crowley's name invisible on his skin. _Do it back, please. Write your name on me. Wherever you like. It doesn't matter. Carve it into bone, I can heal myself after. Write it with your fingers on my back. You're an angel, you can miracle it there, please. Put your name on my ribs, next to my heart. Hide it in my marrow, so that all of my blood will pour from it and nothing in me will not have touched you._

“I love you,” Aziraphale says, and it’s quiet. It’s said to his hair, this gentlestroke of the words and his hands too. “for all of it. The way you overthink everything. The absurd bullethole stickers you had on your car for ten years. Your awful music -“

“Hey, it’s good!”

“Hush.”

“Okay, okay, I get it -“

“You don’t. Keep listening.”

“Angel,” he whispers. More into Aziraphale's neck than anything else.

“I’m telling you to listen," Aziraphale says, pressing on his hip. "And you're going to do that for me, aren't you?"

Crowley swallows, nods. Aziraphale kisses him, pulls back. Moves to his temples, the bridge of his nose, his hairline. One hand spread across Crowley’s gunbarrel chest, the skinny knock of him. “I love the ridiculous things you do to your hair. The way you’ve never even _heard_ of another color than black. I love the way you pretend you never take books from my shop. That you never ‘forget’ plants there. They might need watering, by the way. Look a bit peaked.”

His breath is fast. "I'll be there tomorrow. Promise." Crowley is red everywhere that Aziraphale’s hand has touched him, moving now down his body. Pulling him closer. See the bitten lip, see the wide eyes. See the flush-red want painted on Aziraphale's chest, obvious and telling. _Go slow. Right? Gotta go slow. I'll be gentle. I'm a bit of a car-crash about you. I'm sorry for being everything at once, I'm trying to get here in one piece, I swear it._

"You're beautiful. I never tell you that," Aziraphale says. "Oh, I do love your eyes."

"Aziraphale, you're killing me - " It's impossible to keep his mouth shut, it's so full of Aziraphale's name. It's impossible to keep from pulling Aziraphale close, pulling him open, making a home inside of him. It has been almost twenty-four hours, he's desperate for shelter. For that feel of Aziraphale around him, keeping him whole, keeping him safe. _God, let me fuck you. Please. I'm dying, angel._

The air is so warm in the room. Aziraphale kisses against his ear, pulling him back in. It's the opposite of drowning, all this oxygen here. "Please, _now_ , I need you." 

Crowley groans. They fumble, find each other. This bit of readying, this pull apart. This slackjaw moment, this slide inside. Finally finally finally. There's some sound of moaning. Who did that come from? He doesn't know. This sink into Aziraphale's body. This incredible heat, the pressure of it. Aziraphale's fingers grip at him, fingernails digging into his arms, his back. _Go slow, be careful._ He tries to watch the way Aziraphale's eyes are slam-shut tight, the way his chin lifts, catch that soft _oh_ falling out. He tries, it's hard to keep his eyes open, keep himself steady. He's moving without thinking, yellow-bellied eyes screwed up in ruin and his hell-hair wild. Aziraphale shifts up, trying to grip him tighter, wrapping his legs around as best as he can, shifting his hips back and forth like a tide. In. Out. Over and over and it might have been minutes. Seconds. Centuries. Doesn't matter. 

"Oh, _oh_ god, yes, just like that, oh love -" Aziraphale cries out, arching his head back and burying it into the wreck of the pillows. 

"Shit, angel," he mutters, lost for most language.

Aziraphale makes a keening sound, still blind by well-closed eyes, grabbing one of Crowley's hands and moving it to his own cock. "Do this, would you -"

Crowley kisses him, shoves his goddamn useless, language-lost tongue in and moves his tight fist. Aziraphale cries out into his own mouth. (Crowley drinks it down, starving. Aching. _Let me have it._ ) 

"Oh oh, I'm so -"

" _Please_ ," he says, throwing out the only word he has left. _Please, please, please. Come for me, I want to be covered with you. Smell like you, sour and salted. Pick a spot, anywhere. All of it is yours._

Aziraphale moans into his shoulder, clenching Crowley tight to his chest. Still and taut and tense and perfect. There will be bruises and maybe blood and it's just right. God, yeah, like that, angel. He and his rhythmwork, this _slamfuck_ of his desperate hips and Aziraphale is _clutching_ at him so he's still going and going and holy god, _what the actual goddamn_ \- (The world goes light, light behind his eyes. Sound drops away. Like diving. Like a spacewalk. There is nothing nothing _nothing_ but the clutch on his skin from Aziraphale's steelgrip and the warm mouth pulling him down to kiss him through it and oh hell, oh _god_.)

His heart stops. It doesn't matter. (He might have fallen, might have flown. Casting the emptiness out into the air from his lungs, his arms. The birds will catch it in their flight.)

Crowley collapses. Aziraphale catches him. Long moments pass here, lined up with hearts in order like syzygy and slowing down. The saltsweat cooling and drying on his back, at the nape of his neck. Blinking open to see the dark corners of the room and the ocean-dark sky in the window. A quiet smile there below him, hands gently running along his back.

He shivers. 

"What if I fuck it up?" he asks. Quiet into the room. _I'm gonna fuck it up._ Aziraphale just smiles a little, his head still buried in the pillows. He's watching Crowley and there's that relentless love, that unbearable softness. Crowley looks away, feeling too bare. Too seen by these entomologist eyes (Crowley is an insect, skewered by a pin to a corkboard. To be studied under a microscope; to be named in Latin. Put away in a drawer.) Aziraphale's hands run through Crowley's hair. Too gentle. Uncomfortably so.

"You will sometimes," Aziraphale says quietly, "So will I. But we'll learn from it. And we'll be better together for it."

Crowley arches question-mark brows. "You don't know that."

"Darling, I do." _You say that like you know. How can you? (No one knows. Except God, maybe. But who's spoken to God in millennia? There's no one up there. Not anymore.)_ Suddenly, he's looking at Aziraphale. Because there is a wide hand there, catching his chin, turning him back. Pulling him in to be kissed. _(Yes, kiss me when I need it. Tell me to stop. Turn it off, all the thinking. You can do that. Only you.)_

“Sorry,” he mumbles, waving his hands a little. “You know, for the thing. Being weird. About inviting you over.” 

Aziraphale doesn’t move from the pillow, sunk there and soft and smiling too. “Oh Crowley, you can’t.” He frowns a little. “You waited for me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s different.”

Aziraphale stares at him, study-focused eyes. “How?”

Crowley rolls his eyes, waves a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Also, you’re talking _way_ too much for being in my bed.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale smiles, indulgent and a half-smirk, “Is there a precedent?”

“Oh hell, angel, shut up.” (Crowley kisses him. That settles the matter.)

Can we fix the exact location of a black hole? No, they’re wanderers too. We’re always told to be careful, _keep an eye on them_ , don’t go getting yourself caught. But we’ve misread, misinterpreted, forgotten desire (we always forget desire). We forget about the draw, the magnetic center of us to the dark. We don't go darkly, we don't go without open mouths and open hands, no one falls into a black hole without want.

Aziraphale trails fingers over Crowley's shoulder. "You said it was only me. Ever. Is that true?"

Crowley frowns, his dark brow diving. "'Course it is. Who else would there be?"

"Well, I wondered. I shouldn't. Just that - You were around him a lot. Lucifer. I wondered - " Aziraphale colors slightly, peach-pink across the nose and mottled cheeks. “Did you like him? Like, well, you know."

_Did I love him? Not like that, I never loved him. I liked what he had to say, I wanted to be him. He had answers. Or it seemed like it at the time. Never been really good at keeping myself out of trouble, you know that._ Not-yet-Crowley had been curious, he's always been too damn curious. Too many questions, too few answers. What's so wrong about asking? What's so wrong about saying, look here, this part, can you explain it? So there he'd been, Not-yet-Crowley, turning up to Lucifer's talks, hanging about at the edges. Lucifer had had skin like marble, when he tensed he was hard as stone. Everyone in Heaven had loved him somehow, the bright Morningstar. (God most of all.)

"Fucking hell," Crowley stares, "I'd rather kiss Hastur in the back of a _church_." 

Aziraphale laughs. "Oh, I shouldn't have asked, I really shouldn't have -"

"You can ask," Crowley says. He's a bit quiet. 

But Aziraphale pauses. Brushes a bit of furyburnt hair out of Crowley's face. Damp now with sweat. Doesn't ask anything but offers something instead. “1941.”

“Huh?” _Catch me up, angel. You've shot past me._

Aziraphale frowns. “Oh dear, well, that’s not _quite_ accurate, not to be pedantic, mind, just that’s when I -“

Crowley waits. 

“Well, when I knew. There’s never been anyone else. You know that. You must know that, of course.”

"What the devil was going on in 1941? I mean, I remember a load of Nazis mucking up all of London, couple of 'em got themselves blown up. And you, can't believe you nearly got yourself _discorporated._ You have any idea how boring it gets while you're doing your bloody paperwork and getting a body again? Like, decades. S'why I wound up talking to Milton, the dull sod. Anyway, I got a fucking medal for the shit they pulled. The Nazis, I mean. Still can't think about -"

"You saved the books."

Crowley pauses, remembering details. Books spared from a bomb in a church. Burns on the bottom of his feet. "Wait. That's what did it? I spent _weeks_ on Hamlet, are you kidding me? The books?"

"It's the little things, my dear."

"Obviously," he snorts.

Aziraphale kisses his jaw. “I would take sixty years on Earth with you over the rest of time and not knowing.”

He closes his eyes. _Yeah, that. You’re not supposed to say that (oh thank fuck that you did)._ This is the edge of the earth, this is it, the way I love you and there is no coming back from this (you have been there all this time, we are made out of each other). _I love you I love you I love you. I’m going to love you like the water, please understand. I’ve swallowed the eighth hill, I ruin things. I’ll try to erode you, there’s too much of me. I’m too rough. But there’s more of you, more fossilshit. You won’t let me, right? Be careful._

What is he supposed to say? Helpless in the face of all the languages of Creation. Earth, yes, and Heaven and Hell too. Nothing says the right thing. Nothing shows up on time to his waiting tongue. Then - "I love you." (He wasn't planning on saying it again just now. It's too _much_ still. Too baring. But it slips out, wild things have a habit of this.) Crowley pulls back a little, looking down and checking in with Aziraphale. _Is this okay? I'm sorry for the taste of myself, for my mouth. For the blood there and the spit too._

Crowley hasn't moved from where he's fallen on top of Aziraphale. Aziraphale doesn't seem to mind, his hands still dancing over Crowley's bareskin back. Listening to each other catch their own breath. See the window there, just past the bed. The sky in it. Crowley's never bothered with curtains for it, not this high up. Never seemed to care. So there it is, floor to ceiling. Paling with the coming dawn, painted with quiet light. Quiet light spilling through from the window, catching on the soft parts of Aziraphale's face. Cheeks and the round of his nose. The brows, the one wild hair. The parted mouth.

_I came to loving you and you weren't quite you yet. I wasn't me. But I knew I would love you. It happened early. We were new then and there was sun in your hair (for the first time). I loved you for the way you pulled plums from the trees, the way you bit into a slice of melon. I didn't know then about white tablecloths and osso buco. I didn't know then about red teapots and soft-boiled eggs. I didn't know that I'd love you for them, in the spaces between them. But I knew there'd be something of you._

"I love you," Aziraphale says, kissing there, right there over the left side of his chest. That heart there somewhere within. And it's like the first time, every time.

(Distance: Right here, right now. Time until destination: Nothing at all.) 

* * *

We like to talk about distance but we really mean time. How long, tell me how long. How long do I have to wait? Give me a magazine, a crossword puzzle. I'll be patient, here in this chair and watching the clock. We can run away together. There are stars out there for us, you see. Bright-spangled galaxies. It’s about how we get there. Let's steal a shuttle or a ship, blast off. A little rocket fuel. We'll tell the stars we're coming, we're on our way. Be patient, wait, I'm catching up. Let's go off to the stars, where we came from. _Ex astris; ad astra._

Heaven doesn't matter. Or Hell. Just this. Look here, at this bed, this room. You're in bed with a gentle angel, with bookdust in his hair and stubborn eyes and he's telling you he loves you. He means it (you must believe him). And how is it? How does it feel? Like he's fallen from somewhere high, the atmosphere is crashing through his lungs, burning his skin like a meteor, the ground is coming quicker, yes, and it will crush him. Bones are not made for this, meeting the earth so quickly. It is like being caught then by dove-wings. Surfacing in water. That first rush of breath. That first cool drink after the desert (it has been forty years). This is how it is to be loved in a holy way, breathing psalms into each other's lungs. And you're terrified, you're shaking. Your blood's shaking. Blood and spit and bone and bile, all of it. You know he's going to see all of it (and love those pieces of you too). 

This is the way the story ends (it doesn't, there's no bang, no nothing, just this. Just you and I, in this bed. With this, our quiet whimper).

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted with permission.


End file.
